Martha Minow

On September 21, more than 80 lawyers, anthropologists, students and friends gathered at a symposium at Harvard Law School to honor Sally Falk Moore, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Anthropology, Emerita, for her distinguished and multi-faceted career, for her more recent work as an Affiliated Professor in International Legal Studies at HLS, and for her extraordinary service as a teacher and mentor to students in the HLS Graduate Program. 

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and John Levi ’72, LL.M. ‘73, the chairman of the Legal Services Corporation, presented the report of the Corporation’s Pro Bono Task Force in in HLS’s Wasserstein Hall on Oct. 3, at an event hosted by HLS Professor David Wilkins ‘80, director of the Law School’s Program on the Legal Profession. Established in 1974 by President Nixon, the LSC, a private, nonprofit corporation, is the nation’s largest funder of legal aid providers for low-income Americans.

The second Celebration of Latino Alumni, held at Harvard Law School from Sept. 27 to 30, drew about 200 alumni and guests to the school to share their experiences and reflect on the path of social change.

Many readers and viewers wonder if John Osborn Jr. had someone special in mind when he created the imperious professor in his 1971 hit novel “The Paper Chase,” based on his Harvard Law School years. With a careful reply, the author told HLS Dean Martha Minow and a crowd gathered at Austin Hall Thursday for a discussion about his book that the character was actually a composite of several people. But, he added, “It wasn’t like it was hard to find role models.”

Officially launched on Sept. 25, the Harvard Law School Public Service Venture Fund will award $1 million in grants each year to Harvard Law graduates pursuing careers in public service. The Fund supports two kinds of post-graduate fellowships: “seed grants” for startup public interest ventures, and, through “existing organization-based fellowships,” salary support to graduating HLS students to work at nonprofits or government agencies in the U.S. and abroad.

In October 1962, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Harvard Law School on “The Future of Integration.” It was six months before he would be imprisoned in a Birmingham jail, 10 months before the March on Washington, almost two years before the signing of the Civil Rights Act and almost six years before his assassination. “It may be that the law cannot make a man love me,” he said, “but it can keep him from lynching me.”

On Sept. 5, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan ’86 joined Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow for a conversation on life as a Supreme Court Justice. The former and current deans spoke before an overflow audience in the Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, Clinical Wing building.

Harvard Law School Professor John C.P. Goldberg has been appointed to the Eli Goldston Professorship of Law. Goldberg, an expert in tort law, tort theory and political philosophy, joined HLS as a tenured faculty member in 2008. Previously, he was Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research at Vanderbilt University.

Cass Sunstein ’78, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), will return to the Harvard Law School faculty as Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law following his planned departure in August from the Obama Administration, Dean Martha Minow announced today.

The Harvard Law School faculty has voted to promote Benjamin Sachs, a specialist in labor and workplace law, from assistant professor to professor of law – a tenured faculty position.

Following a vote of the Harvard Law School faculty, D. James Greiner, a specialist in the application of modern quantitative thinking to legal questions, has been promoted from assistant professor to professor of law—a tenured faculty position.

Professor Emeritus Charles M. Haar ‘48, a pioneer in land-use law whose scholarship focused on laws and institutions of city planning, urban development and environmental issues, died on January 10, 2012. He was 91.

This spring, artists transformed the walls outside Milstein East in the Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, Clinical Wing Building into a gallery of quotations about law and justice. The quotations span the period between 600 BCE and the present day.

As an HLS student in the early 1980s, James O’Neal dreamed of combining his passions for law and education to help at-risk kids in New York City. But times were grim for lawyers interested in public interest work. The Legal Services Corporation, the primary provider of legal aid to low-income people in the United States, was in dire straits after losing much of its federal funding, and there were few other opportunities—and little support—for public service jobs. For O’Neal and others like him, the prospects were dim.

On April 25th, Harvard Law School celebrated Justice John Paul Stevens’ 35 years of service on the Supreme Court with an event honoring his work and his contributions to the fields of environmental, energy, and natural resources law.